National Library of Australia - Home page
NLA News - home June 2005 Volume XV Number 10
click to enlarge
Greg Power (b.1974)
Snjezana Cosic
2005 Norman McCann Summer
Scholars, 7/02/2005
Pictures Collection
nla.int-nl39431–gp1–3

Before You Head Off for That Friendly World …

click to enlarge
Cover of Australia and You
(Melbourne: Ramsay, Ware Publishing, 1948?)

Snjezana Cosic, a Norman McCann Summer Scholar for 2005, investigates representations of Australia in immigration publicity between 1945 and 1960

Sun, surf, beaches and food. These are the common images conjured up by post-World War 2 British migrants when describing their perceptions of Australia after leaving home to head ‘Down Under’. In order to make Australia an attractive destination for migrants, the Department of Information and the Department of Immigration—both assigned the role of developing Australia’s immigration publicity campaign—relied heavily on presenting Australia in an idealised, perhaps even simplistic, way.

Australia’s vast opportunities, abundant leisure time and Utopian climate featured prominently in immigration advertisements. As well as attempting to lure Britons with appealing images and descriptions of Australia, the two departments were also trying to construct a quintessential Australian identity. Between 1945 and 1960, their vision of what constituted an Australian was evolving. It was shaped by external influences and was also beset with challenges posed by migrants themselves.

click to enlarge
Douglas Baglin (b.1926)
British migrants’ first look at Sydney, 1968
negative; 9.5 x 12.1 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3311942

Following World War 2, Australia was still very much a rural society and was only beginning to build its industrial capacity on a mass scale. In attempting to familiarise Britons with Australia, immigration publicity in the late 1940s focussed on Australia’s landscape and economic wealth as offering ample opportunities for potential migrants.

In this vision, the industrial worker and farmer were featured as figures central to Australia’s identity. This is evident in the booklet, Australia and You, which extolled Australia as being a ‘sunny land of happy workers’ and encouraged readers to consider employment in the rural sector where ‘work offers a big choice of jobs—and an active outdoor life under healthy conditions’.

The availability of unskilled labour, whether in Australia’s primary or secondary industries, was presented as part of an idealised version of Australia where migrants could build a successful future—especially men. This is epitomised by the poster There’s a Man’s Job for You in Australia, produced by the Department of Information in 1947.

The poster says much about the department’s attempt at defining the essence of Australia’s identity, suggesting that the archetypal Australian is the male worker and farmer, and reinforcing its message through the image of a strong, bronzed citizen striding confidently towards the viewer against background imagery drawn from the rural and industrial sectors. The poster implies that Australia is a country where truly masculine ambitions can be fulfilled.

click to enlarge
W.P. [and] J.G.
There’s a Man’s Job for You in Australia 1947
col. poster; 102 x 77 cm
Commonwealth Department of Information
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3279439

Given its rarity and the interesting glimpse of government policy it provides, this poster is a very special item. While the National Library holds many travel and tourist posters, this is the only immigration poster in its collections. What is more extraordinary, between them, the National Archives of Australia and the National Library of Australia seem only to possess two posters of this kind.

The success of Menzies’ 1949 election saw a significant shift in Australia’s immigration publicity campaigns. While Menzies did not have any direct input to the content of immigration publicity, his widely disseminated views about what constituted a typical Australian heavily influenced the way in which the country was presented to the British migrant.

Much has already been written about Menzies’ reconfiguration of Australia’s identity during his prime inistership—especially the impact of his 1942 ‘Forgotten People’ speech, in which he delineated his vision of Australia. Menzies spoke of an Australia composed largely of an unorganised middle class, ‘the backbone of the nation’, and singled out those segments of Australia’s population which fitted his vision. They were ‘salary-earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers and so on’. Menzies’ perception of the middle class as epitomising Australian values continued into the 1950s and was influential in shaping the idea of an ‘Australian way of life’.

click to enlarge
Reproduced from Australia: Portrait of a Nation (Sydney: F.H. Johnston Publishing Co., [1954?])

Menzies’ explicit redefinition of Australia’s national character is clearly evident in immigration publicity that was disseminated to potential British migrants in the 1950s. Australia’s identity was presented as being diverse, and there was a more direct attempt to define the Australian character. This was evident in the Radio Australia program Our Way of Life. In one particular show, ‘The Typical Australian’, the narrator used highly descriptive language and appeared to take on the role of an anthropologist commenting on the remarkable features of an alien race of people:

There is a distinctive Australian face. It is a long, narrow face, lean-jawed, high-nosed, with a fresh complexion under its usual coating of tan. The rangy, sinewy frame allied to this face is most noticeable in the North … this Northern type embodies what Australians imagine themselves to be—a race hardened by conquest of a difficult land, a democratic, easygoing, friendly people, rightful heirs to this unfettered freedom of a land where man is taken on his merits and where servility is unknown.

The narrator continued to outline the ‘typical’ Australian by also referring to the northerners’ urbanised counterpart, who was independent yet law-abiding. A ‘cheerful fellow’ who also possessed a ‘hard shrewdness’ and whose ‘relationships with women are comradely rather than romantic’. While this is a more detailed account of the Australian identity than many of those offered in the late 1940s, Australia in the 1950s was still very much a man’s country. Printed publications also portrayed Australia’s identity as varying. An example is evident in the 954 booklet Australia: Portrait of a Nation: ‘The conversion of a wilderness into a nation has produced highly individual types of human beings within the broad pattern of the national character’.

click to enlarge
‘Another Outbreak of the “Misfit Measles”’
Reproduced from Australia and the Migrant, no. 44, January 1950

Rather than depicting Australia as embodying the unskilled worker, Portrait of a Nation reveals a country with a variegated population, much like the kinds of people who made up Menzies’ ‘forgotten people’. Illustrations include a laboratory aide, a child, a stockman, a family sharing Christmas fare, army trainees, a racecourse crowd, patrons at a country hotel, an elderly woman, an army girl, farm boys and a craftsman.

Australia’s diversity was further emphasised by the celebration of its multicultural composition. For example, in the aforementioned ‘The Typical Australian’ radio program, the narrator highlighted the important contribution made by non-British European migrants:

The Australian’s way of life, his mind and temperament are far removed from that of the Britisher. He may be further influenced by the stream of European migrants now arriving in this country with their endowment of an older culture, their special skills and accomplishments.

This is an interesting interpretation of Australian society given that non-British European migrants’ cultural distinctiveness at this time was seen by many as an obstacle to their assimilation into the Australian way of life. In order to gain support for immigration, publicity portraying migrants in a non-threatening and homogenised way was distributed to the general Australian population. They were seen as devoid of any alien characteristics and capable of adapting easily to their new surroundings.

click to enlarge
 ‘Migrants’ Hostels Grievances Fostered by Communists’
Reproduced from Australia and the Migrant, no. 72, December 1952

While publicity circulated amongst Australians sought to down-play any sense of migrant exclusion from Australian society, departmental officials were quick to publicly marginalise dissident migrants in immigration publicity. Criticisms aimed at Australia’s publicity scheme challenged officials’ construction of an Australian identity.

Beginning in the late 1940s, British migrants complained that Australia ’s immigration publicity offered an unrealistic account of the country, with those complaints intensifying in the 1950s. During this period many migrants left Australia with a strong sense of disillusionment that was highly publicised in Britain’s mainstream press. Stories of families being left unemployed or destitute, and poor conditions in reception centres featured prominently in newspaper articles.

Information Minister, Howard Beale, responded to these accusations by writing a two-page article in a newsletter produced for British migrants, Australia and the Migrant. He labelled those who criticised Australia upon their return to Britain as being ‘misfit migrants’ who had acquired the ‘misfit measles’ and ‘would blame anyone or anything rather than themselves for not making a go of their attempt to emigrate to Australia’. Beale argued:

If Heaven were to start seeking migrants, a few new settlers would turn their backs on the Pearly Gates and say that they had been misled about conditions there. Probably the harps would not be as big as they imagined. More likely, they would be disgruntled because after having been given a harp they discovered that they didn’t know how to play it.

The Department of Immigration went even further in trying to stamp out criticism. Following riots which erupted across migrant reception centres accommodating Britons in New South Wales and Victoria in 1952, the Department of Immigration accused participants of being communists. The department dismissed the migrants’ statement that an increase in hostel tariffs and the centres’ poor conditions were the source of their anger.

click to enlarge
Australian Minister for Immigration and Information at a London press conference in the Waldorf Hotel, 1947 to speed the flow of migrants
Pictures Collection, Neg. 1660

To counter the bad publicity that the riots received in the British media, an eight-page edition of Australia and the Migrant was released, with the heading ‘Migrants’ Hostel Grievances Fostered by Communists’. The article opined:

Communists have pursued a deliberate policy of ingratiating themselves with migrants in Australia and exploiting their grievances. Known Communists were a guiding force in recent demonstrations and near-rioting in migrant hostels.

This article—quoting the findings of a government inquiry into the migrants’ complaints—singled out, in particular, the British Migrants Welfare Association as being subject to communist influences. (The association was established in the early 1950s to assist newly arrived Britons and was critical of hostel conditions. It accused the government of overlooking migrants’ needs.) The article made vague connections between the association and the Communist Party. The only evidence used to back this claim was that communists ‘had been legal advisors to migrants in various lawsuits against the Commonwealth’. Regardless, the department warned the association to ‘detach itself from communist influence’, for if it did not it ‘could damage Australian goodwill’.

Accusing migrant dissenters of being communists was not unusual for the Australian Government; blaming bolshevism was a regular practice during the Cold War, to discredit critics and to uphold the status quo. It was a means of developing and solidifying an Australian identity in relation to an opposing enemy. While Australia was portrayed as the bastion of kindness with its offer of ‘goodwill’, the supposed communist sympathies of some British migrants were detailed as an attempt to damage Australian values.

By researching its immigration publicity scheme in the post-1945 era, it is interesting to note some of the transformations and problems associated with the projection of Australia. The undertaking of such a mammoth task has been made all the more stimulating when perusing the National Library’s extensive collection.

SNJEZANA COSIC is currently completing her Masters degree in Public History at the University of Melbourne and hopes to pursue a career in the cultural heritage field.

Back to NLA News Index Back to July Issue Back to NLA Home Page
NLA News - home

To order a particular issue of the NLA News e-mail nlasales@nla.gov.au
or join the Friends of the National Library of Australia and receive a copy each month by mail.